“This course puts our university at the forefront of studies in this field and confirms the Church's desire to be present with the greatest commitment in this area,” said Bishop Enrico dal Covolo, rector of the Pontifical Lateran University.

The new master's degree in digital journalism comes after Pope Benedict XVI reached 2.5 million twitter followers after posting his first tweet on Dec. 12, 2012.

This Sunday, the Pope will add Latin to his eight other languages he tweets in, which already include English, Spanish, Arabic, French, German, Italian, Polish and Portuguese.

Course lecturers for the Lateran university's new program include the Vatican's Secretariat of State media adviser Greg Burke, who took up office just last year after working for Fox News as Rome correspondent.

The master's degree will be in Italian and hold a maximum of 35 students who will study in depth online journalism and how to start up their own business in the industry.

The course leaders will be former director of Italian news outlet Sky Tg24 Emilio Carelli and Dario Edoardo Viganò.